Katarina Whimsy (
sorcyress) wrote2025-08-18 03:55 am
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Yeeeeet!
So, I've been alluding to this off and on in various spaces, but I don't _think_ I've made a public declaration. The end of my summer vacation has included one heck of an exciting event: I did a yeeterus on Thursday the 14th!
Yeeterus, noun, surgery to get rid of some unnecessary body parts -in my case, uterus, fallopian tubes, and cervix. More commonly known as a hysterectomy, and I suppose this means I can no longer be hysterical, a joke I am definitely going to workshop in the near future.
I've been coy about it mostly because I have been _terrified_ it would be outlawed before I could do it, fuck you very much the modern USA. Being at that sweet spot of "gender-affirming trans thing" and "sterilization and therefore anti-breeding thing" can make one nervous like that. It's weird that something so personal feels so acutely political. Like. I'm not ensuring I never have periods again *at* anyone, I just find menstruation incredibly personally dysphoric. The confirmation to never have children of my body isn't an attack on anyone else, it's just...something I've been aware was true since I was nineteen. I dunno man, why do you care so much?
Recovery has been very much in line with what I've hoped. The pain has been incredibly mild, and almost entirely kept at bay by careful cycling of tylenol and ibuprofen. The discomfort has been a lot higher --it turns out laparoscopic surgeries involve pumping one full of gas and then that gas has to dissipate somehow. I am treating myself gentle and not walking any further than around the house --but I am walking, and that's lovely.
I have kept an impressive log of feelings and thoughts and observations and stuff, which I am not *quite* willing to just open-share to everyone, but if you're thinking about doing the same, let me know and I'll pull the best tidbits for you.
I am so happy about it. Like, it's gonna make the start of the school year suck and I'm still so fucking happy.
Yay!
~Sor
MOOP!
Yeeterus, noun, surgery to get rid of some unnecessary body parts -in my case, uterus, fallopian tubes, and cervix. More commonly known as a hysterectomy, and I suppose this means I can no longer be hysterical, a joke I am definitely going to workshop in the near future.
I've been coy about it mostly because I have been _terrified_ it would be outlawed before I could do it, fuck you very much the modern USA. Being at that sweet spot of "gender-affirming trans thing" and "sterilization and therefore anti-breeding thing" can make one nervous like that. It's weird that something so personal feels so acutely political. Like. I'm not ensuring I never have periods again *at* anyone, I just find menstruation incredibly personally dysphoric. The confirmation to never have children of my body isn't an attack on anyone else, it's just...something I've been aware was true since I was nineteen. I dunno man, why do you care so much?
Recovery has been very much in line with what I've hoped. The pain has been incredibly mild, and almost entirely kept at bay by careful cycling of tylenol and ibuprofen. The discomfort has been a lot higher --it turns out laparoscopic surgeries involve pumping one full of gas and then that gas has to dissipate somehow. I am treating myself gentle and not walking any further than around the house --but I am walking, and that's lovely.
I have kept an impressive log of feelings and thoughts and observations and stuff, which I am not *quite* willing to just open-share to everyone, but if you're thinking about doing the same, let me know and I'll pull the best tidbits for you.
I am so happy about it. Like, it's gonna make the start of the school year suck and I'm still so fucking happy.
Yay!
~Sor
MOOP!
psocoptera (
psocoptera) wrote2025-08-17 06:21 pm
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Entry tags:
Hugo ceremony and initial statistics
The ceremony moved along nicely but the pronunciation problems were *not cool*. Did not seem like they had practiced or received adequate guidance. At one point I swear one of them misread "Hans" as "Harris" - an easy visual misread but exactly the kind of thing that should have been caught in rehearsal.
We have some preliminary stats - no nominating stats or runner-up runoffs, just the runoffs for first place. See them here. There's also an Administrators' Report (here) with some info about nomination votes they moved between categories and qualifications/disqualifications.
I'm not sure what to make of total numbers. They said something during the ceremony like 1900 final ballots - compared with 3436 in 2024, a huge drop-off (I said something last night about it being 3800 in 2024 but that was the number before disqualified votes), but then if you look by categories, 2189 votes for novels in 2024, or 2558 votes for novella (the category with the most votes) vs... I guess we don't know exactly, but if "over 80% of voters voted in the Best Novel category" (in 2025) that's probably something like 1600 votes? I guess that's still a pretty significant drop, but not quite as huge as I was thinking at first. Is this the Chinese cohort dropping out? 1338 nominating votes in 2025 vs 1720 in 2024, so a bunch of that drop is already there in nominations, whatever it is.
Category-wise, I'm surprised to see Tainted Cup leading the pack from the start, and Tusks of Extinction as well. Interesting. Interesting to see which categories had strong leads from the start and which had changes through the rounds - the flow diagrams are really nice for that. Check out Moniquill Blackgoose's dominance for the Astounding - nice.
We have some preliminary stats - no nominating stats or runner-up runoffs, just the runoffs for first place. See them here. There's also an Administrators' Report (here) with some info about nomination votes they moved between categories and qualifications/disqualifications.
I'm not sure what to make of total numbers. They said something during the ceremony like 1900 final ballots - compared with 3436 in 2024, a huge drop-off (I said something last night about it being 3800 in 2024 but that was the number before disqualified votes), but then if you look by categories, 2189 votes for novels in 2024, or 2558 votes for novella (the category with the most votes) vs... I guess we don't know exactly, but if "over 80% of voters voted in the Best Novel category" (in 2025) that's probably something like 1600 votes? I guess that's still a pretty significant drop, but not quite as huge as I was thinking at first. Is this the Chinese cohort dropping out? 1338 nominating votes in 2025 vs 1720 in 2024, so a bunch of that drop is already there in nominations, whatever it is.
Category-wise, I'm surprised to see Tainted Cup leading the pack from the start, and Tusks of Extinction as well. Interesting. Interesting to see which categories had strong leads from the start and which had changes through the rounds - the flow diagrams are really nice for that. Check out Moniquill Blackgoose's dominance for the Astounding - nice.
flexagon (
flexagon) wrote2025-08-16 01:40 pm
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Finishing up some big projects, kinda.
I let it go too long again and now my brain feels overstuffed.
I again was waiting for things to finish, and again they were slow. But: 1) I have a signed P&S on the new rental condo I last mentioned on June 26! That was a long road and I expected to get there on Monday. We do have it though -- just waiting for my deposit to clear -- and 2) I've also submitted my completed Thursday crossword puzzle to the NYT for possible publication. Those were both several-week processes, and I'm breathing a sign of relief over those. I did one more thing of Emotional Resonance and Finishing Up, which one could easily say I'd been putting off for years, by stepping down as admin of a Facebook group that used to be a big deal in my life.
I also had coffee with the seller of this condo; as I suspected he's going to barely break even on this house-flipping endeavor of his, though he says he learned a great deal. It's very clear that he and I will not fight, now that the hard bargaining is over. While I think we have differing politics, we are/were both managers who know how to do both budgeting and paperwork. He will continue to own Unit 1 for a while (he's renting it out for a year), there are a couple of offers on Unit 2 but I don't know whether the prospective buyers plan to occupy or rent out, and I of course will be the not-so-absentee landlady of Unit 3. What I actually kinda like about this: he has an incentive to sell Unit 2 to people who are sensible. And that is good for me, too.
There are other things that happened, including a fascinating afternoon in which a professional dog trainer visited Blue-Green Street and taught the adults how to teach the dogs about things. I've never spoken dog very well, and I was laser-focused on what this guy said about what dogs perceive when people do things. Forget "what is it like to be a bat"; there is enough of the alien in our very own households. So now I have learned what to do with Dog #1 barks anxiously at the window (yelling is really not enough and may even be received positively; there should be verbal reassurance but there there MUST be a PHYSICAL redirect, within seconds). I also know how to take the puppy outside, get her to pee (on leash, now, then allow off leash), how to reinforce her coming to her name, and how to ignore her when she's crated. I will never be a dog person, but I'm around the place enough that minimal competence is already a huge confidence booster. I feel less at the mercy of something I don't understand.
Speaking of that house, btw, all my research into HVAC has paid off. The tenants' central A/C is working again and also has been made more robust, thanks to my research, and all under extended warranty too! It is pleasing. All our tenants need new leases, so that's another thing. It is, in general, hard to keep up with maintenance of things... which is a lot of why I'm a minimalist in the first place, so one could definitely ask why I seem to be collecting houses. (I think there's a coherent answer, but not one I can articulate quickly today, and three is definitely going to be enough.)
I've been quite social this week, but most of it was 1:1. Now I'm invited to a larger game event I feel some trepidation about, but I'm sure it will be fine. Off to work out a bit and then go. I didn't get around to discussing the larger shift I hope I'm going through, from large-ish projects to less of that but more daily discipline; so that can wait, maybe for a post that's more about workouts.
I again was waiting for things to finish, and again they were slow. But: 1) I have a signed P&S on the new rental condo I last mentioned on June 26! That was a long road and I expected to get there on Monday. We do have it though -- just waiting for my deposit to clear -- and 2) I've also submitted my completed Thursday crossword puzzle to the NYT for possible publication. Those were both several-week processes, and I'm breathing a sign of relief over those. I did one more thing of Emotional Resonance and Finishing Up, which one could easily say I'd been putting off for years, by stepping down as admin of a Facebook group that used to be a big deal in my life.
I also had coffee with the seller of this condo; as I suspected he's going to barely break even on this house-flipping endeavor of his, though he says he learned a great deal. It's very clear that he and I will not fight, now that the hard bargaining is over. While I think we have differing politics, we are/were both managers who know how to do both budgeting and paperwork. He will continue to own Unit 1 for a while (he's renting it out for a year), there are a couple of offers on Unit 2 but I don't know whether the prospective buyers plan to occupy or rent out, and I of course will be the not-so-absentee landlady of Unit 3. What I actually kinda like about this: he has an incentive to sell Unit 2 to people who are sensible. And that is good for me, too.
There are other things that happened, including a fascinating afternoon in which a professional dog trainer visited Blue-Green Street and taught the adults how to teach the dogs about things. I've never spoken dog very well, and I was laser-focused on what this guy said about what dogs perceive when people do things. Forget "what is it like to be a bat"; there is enough of the alien in our very own households. So now I have learned what to do with Dog #1 barks anxiously at the window (yelling is really not enough and may even be received positively; there should be verbal reassurance but there there MUST be a PHYSICAL redirect, within seconds). I also know how to take the puppy outside, get her to pee (on leash, now, then allow off leash), how to reinforce her coming to her name, and how to ignore her when she's crated. I will never be a dog person, but I'm around the place enough that minimal competence is already a huge confidence booster. I feel less at the mercy of something I don't understand.
Speaking of that house, btw, all my research into HVAC has paid off. The tenants' central A/C is working again and also has been made more robust, thanks to my research, and all under extended warranty too! It is pleasing. All our tenants need new leases, so that's another thing. It is, in general, hard to keep up with maintenance of things... which is a lot of why I'm a minimalist in the first place, so one could definitely ask why I seem to be collecting houses. (I think there's a coherent answer, but not one I can articulate quickly today, and three is definitely going to be enough.)
I've been quite social this week, but most of it was 1:1. Now I'm invited to a larger game event I feel some trepidation about, but I'm sure it will be fine. Off to work out a bit and then go. I didn't get around to discussing the larger shift I hope I'm going through, from large-ish projects to less of that but more daily discipline; so that can wait, maybe for a post that's more about workouts.
psocoptera (
psocoptera) wrote2025-08-15 06:25 pm
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Unfit to Print
Unfit to Print, KJ Charles, romance novella. I often find novella-length romance a little funny - like, what, that's it, they sorted out their differences that easily? - but this one was pretty good, a childhood friends/sweethearts second chance romance between a lawyer and a porn seller, both men of color in Victorian England. A nice little read.
coffeepaws (
coffeepaws) wrote in
getting_started2025-08-08 10:21 pm
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Mood theme
I can't figure out where / how I can select a mood theme. Could somebody help me? Thank you :)